Late Stories

by Stephen Dixon

  So I got off the elevator, had my key ring out probably from the time I got into the elevator and pressed the button for the seventh floor or maybe even before I went into the building and walked up to its revolving door, ready to stick the key into her door lock, when I thought Wait. Don’t go in yet. Listen to her play. This is a special moment. The music’s beautiful and she plays it so delicately. Stay out here for as long as the music lasts. I’d never heard her play this way, meaning with me on the other side of the door. I put the key ring back into my pants pocket. Or maybe I didn’t till the playing stopped and I decided to go inside. I’ll explain that in a moment. While I listened to her play I said to myself, How lucky can you get? Having a woman you love who loves you and who can play such beautiful music so beautifully? Something like that. Then I just stopped thinking, I could almost say. Just listened. Listened without thinking, I could almost say. The beautiful playing. The beautiful woman who was playing. That she loves me. That I love her. That she’ll be happy to see me when I finally open the door and go inside. Then I’m going to tell her I stood outside her door for however long it was and was mesmerized, enchanted, rapt—some word or words, but not one of those—by the music and her playing. So, actually lots of thoughts. But mostly, I just listened. Then her playing stopped. The piece seemed over. As I think I said, I don’t think I ever heard that piece before. Not just her playing it—that I know I’d never heard—but also the piece itself. I’ve heard it many times since. On the radio, and a recording of it and other Brahms’ piano pieces I bought a short time later. Rudolf Serkin. And, after the first time I listened to her play it from the hallway outside her door, she played it a couple of times while I was in the apartment and also a couple of times or more in the house we bought in Baltimore fifteen years later, after we had the piano moved there from our apartment in New York. I’m sure she also played it a number of times in the apartment when she was still learning it and I wasn’t around. Then, I don’t know why—I’m saying, after she finished playing it that first time and I waited to see if she was going to play it again or start something else—instead of using the door key she gave me, I rang the bell. Would I have stood behind the door listening to her play the piece again or something else? I’m not sure, but I think I would have, at least for a minute or two. Some movement appeared in the peephole a few seconds later and she opened the door. She was smiling, glad to see me as I thought she’d be, said “Hiya, Sweetie,” and held out her arms. We hugged and kissed. I told her I was outside her front door listening to her play for about ten minutes. “You played the piece so beautifully. I’ve said it before: you have a special light touch. But I never before heard you play a piece so beautifully and ethereally as you did.” “Oh, I don’t play well,” she said. “And I was only practicing.” “What are you talking about? You play exceptionally well. I was completely taken in by your playing. If you had started something else, and maybe even if you had played the same piece again and I was still in the hallway, I would have stayed out there and listened to that too. What’s the name of the one you played? I want to get a recording of it. Or maybe I won’t and I’ll reserve the experience of hearing it for when you play it.” “Get it if you want. It might be good to hear the difference of a real professional playing it and me. Brahms, an Intermezzo, opus one-nineteen, in—” and she gave the key it’s in. “But you’re only saying all this because of how you feel towards me, which is very nice; you’ll not hear me complaining. But you don’t have to, you know. I’ve no illusions about my playing.” “My feelings for you, sure,” I said, “though that’s not why I’m saying it. Believe me, I was truly entranced. The music, your playing, my being the only person listening: everything was just right.” “Oh, come on. Like some tea? I was just about to make myself some. And I bought chocolate lace cookies at Mondel’s this morning, and you like them, so let’s have cookies and tea.” “All right,” I said. And that was it. I’ve done this once before. I love remembering it. Those wonderful ten minutes or so. And then, of course, ringing the bell and her opening the door with a smile, because she’d looked through the peephole and saw it was me, and putting her arms out for me and me going into them and our hugging and kissing. One hug, one kiss. And then the cookies and tea and her asking, while we sat at the table, how come I rang the doorbell instead of using the key—“Did you lose it?” I said “I don’t know why I rang the bell. Maybe I just didn’t want to break the mood or something, and opening the door on my own might have startled you or been like barging into your apartment. Not that ringing the bell wouldn’t also jar things. So I really don’t know. It seemed the right thing to do at the time, and I was rewarded with your beautiful smile and outstretched arms and a kiss. Anyway, I don’t think music has ever had such an effect on me before. No, I really can’t think of anytime that it did. It didn’t make me cry but it sure made me feel good, and I still feel good. I feel great.”

  The Dream and the Photograph

  He puts down the newspaper, brings the glass he’s been drinking out of into the kitchen and washes it and puts it upside down in the dishrack. He makes sure the door’s locked and turns off the kitchen light. He’s about to go to bed. It’s a little past nine, around the time he almost always goes to bed, but he needs a book to read there. He finished a book this afternoon while he was having lunch and doesn’t know what he wants to read next. He sees Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn lying flat, cover up, on a bookshelf in the living room. He read it about ten years ago, remembers liking it. He’s liked all Sebald’s novels, Austerlitz the most, but that one he loaned to someone, he forgets whom, and never got it back. So maybe he’d like reading Saturn again, something he doesn’t do that much—reread a book—or just start it in bed and if he doesn’t think he’ll want to read any more of it, put it back on the shelf or in the bookcase with the other Sebald books tomorrow and look for another book to read. Or he can drive to his favorite bookshop in Baltimore, only a few miles from his house, and look for a book there. He’s done that a number of times at this shop, scanned the titles on the fiction shelves starting at “A” and a couple of times at “Z” till he found a book he wanted to read or at least start.

  He opens the Sebald book to read the first page or two and a photograph drops out of it to the floor. “Damn,” he says, “what the fuck’s going on?” because so many things he grabs or even touches these days fall to the floor, forcing him to bend down and sometimes to get on one knee to pick up. He bends down and picks it up. The back of it says “6/07.” So it was taken in June, six years ago to the month. The photograph has several people in it, all facing the camera. He, Abby, two of his colleagues at school, one standing beside his wife, his arm around her waist. Also the two administrative assistants of his department at the time, and three women he doesn’t recognize. They must work in the Rare Books and Special Collections unit of the school’s library, because that’s the room the photograph was taken in. The occasion was the first day of an exhibit, timed to coincide with his retirement from teaching at the school after twenty-six years, of his original typescripts and first editions of most of his books and photographs of him doing several things related to his writing—sitting at his typewriter at home, reading to a small audience at his favorite bookshop in Baltimore, dressed in a tux at an awards ceremony in New York when he was a finalist for a prestigious literary prize, Abby standing next to him, holding on to her walker, and so on. The exhibit was up for two months. Sometime later, he forgets where he bumped into her, he asked the librarian (she must be one of the three women he doesn’t recognize in the photo) in charge of the exhibit and collecting his finished typescripts and working manuscripts and letters and such—even the unrepairable manual typewriter he must have written a dozen of his books on and which was also behind a display case in the exhibit—how many people came to it. “The usual,” she said, “or maybe a bit less, as it was summer and few students and faculty were around. Nine or ten? Maybe five more who didn’t sign in or were in the room fo
r other reasons but stopped to look.” In the photograph Abby’s in her wheelchair and he’s behind her, hands tightly gripping the handles of the chair, which he always did when he stood behind it, afraid it’d roll away. She looks as if she’s trying to smile but can’t quite get it out. That doesn’t sound right. She was forcing herself to smile. Didn’t want to spoil the photograph—everyone else in it smiling as if they meant it—by looking how she really felt. That doesn’t get it either. So what is it? Photograph was taken a year and a half before she died of pneumonia. She was very sick the previous year, twice almost died of pneumonia. She was still weak when the photograph was taken. Who took it? Probably someone else who worked in Special Collections, or a professional photographer hired by the library so it could publicize the event in its newsletter and on its web page. She hadn’t had the tracheotomy done on her yet—that was a half year later. He knows she never would have consented to be photographed with the inner cannula, was it?—the trach tube, or just “trach”—sticking out of her neck. She doesn’t look that weak, though. Her face is full and there’s some color in her cheeks. Her hair is unkempt. Maybe it was hot and humid that day—Baltimore can get like that in June—so the sticky weather could have done that to her hair—it had plenty of times before—and they might not have had the time or any place to brush it once they got to the library, and brushing her hair was something he usually did for her by then. He puts the photograph back in the book, makes sure the porch door is locked, shuts off the living room light, and brings the book with him to his bedroom. Doesn’t read much of it. Two pages; less. Keeps pulling the photograph out and looking at it. Why does she look the way she does in the photograph—sad, really; dejected? Because she’s in a wheelchair and everyone else is standing. Because she’s sick and weak and they’re all healthy and strong. Because she had to be pushed there in the wheelchair—by this time, she couldn’t even move it a few feet on her own—while everyone else in the photograph is able to walk and run and so on. In other words: they get around on their own while she’s dependent on other people. Because she’ll probably be dead in a year or two, the way she’s going, and half the people in the photograph will probably be going to her funeral or memorial or whatever they’ll go to for her. Because she probably needs to go to the toilet, or will soon—it’s been more than two hours since she last went—and she’ll have to be wheeled there and lifted on and off the toilet seat and have her pad changed. He doesn’t remember doing any of that, but he probably did and all of it so she wouldn’t wet herself on their way home, or if she did, she’d have a dry pad on. Because she could already be wet and is uncomfortable and doesn’t want to say anything in front of all these people or she just doesn’t want to pull him away from this room right now. Because she didn’t want to come to the exhibit but did because he urged her to. It won’t be the same if she’s not there, he told her. “They’re making it into such a big deal,” he said, or something like it, “that there’s going to be a photographer there and I want you to be in the photos with me.” Because sometimes she just wants to die and she has a look that gives the impression that’s what she’s thinking and maybe some of the other things. “I hate being photographed,” she might be saying to herself while the photographer’s photographing the entire group. “I look so awful and sick and weak and ugly and my hair’s a mess, while before I got sick I was pretty and had an attractive figure because I wasn’t squashed into a wheelchair most of the day and I always took care of my hair myself.” He puts the book on the night table, places the photograph on it, and turns off the light.

  He has a dream a few hours later. Had two or three dreams, without waking up from them, before he had this one, but this is the only one he remembers. He turns on the night table light, gets out of bed and goes to the bathroom, pees, sits on the bed, his feet on the floor, and gets the notebook he’s been writing his dreams in the last four years off the night table and starts to write. “7/2/13. Dream of Abby in the hospital. She’s sitting on the bed, not in it, her feet almost reaching the floor. She looks good: healthy, pretty; she seems happy. Her face is rosy, her hair’s brushed back into a ponytail. She looks to be around 40. It’s her last day in the hospital. Tomorrow she’s coming home. We have a son, who seems to be around 3 years old. He’s blond, as Abby was when I first met her, and also blond like Randolph, the son of the woman I lived with in California from ’65 to ’68. I was the boy’s surrogate father for 3 years. Randolph, 2½ when I moved into his mother’s house, even called me ‘Daddy.’ I say to Abby ‘I have to go.’ She says ‘You’re leaving me with a hysterical child?’ The boy’s been screaming on and off for the last minute. We ask him ‘What is it? What’s wrong, little guy?’ but he continues to scream, his eyes squeezed closed. I say to Abby over the boy’s screams ‘You’re all right now. You can take care of him. But I’m already late for my appointment.’ ‘Take him with you then,’ and I say ‘You know I can’t,’ and I leave the room. The boy follows me, still screaming hysterically. ‘My son,’ I think. ‘My poor son. Then I think ‘What about this tactic? Maybe it’ll work, because nothing else has.’ I say to him ‘You like tomatoes, don’t you?’ He stops screaming long enough to nod. ‘Well, if I give you a few cherry tomatoes, will you stay with your mother and not make a big fuss anymore?’ He nods again and this time doesn’t resume screaming. I empty a few cherry tomatoes out of a bag into his hand. He eats one, smiles, and eats another. He seems fine now. ‘Here, have some more,’ I say. ‘You deserve it. You’re a great kid. I always thought that.’ I go back into Abby’s room. She’s still sitting off the bed. I say ‘I got him to stop screaming. I can leave him with you now, can’t I? He won’t scream again.’ She says ‘You can. But how’d you do it?’ ‘All it took were tomatoes,’ I say. ‘Cherry tomatoes. Not the big beefsteak kind. He seems to like the cherry ones best. Here, want some? Why not take the whole bag?’ and I give her it. ‘No, thanks,’ she says, giving it back. ‘You’ve done enough for me.’ I kiss her, say ‘See you later,’ and leave the room. ‘Damn,’ I say. ‘I should have kissed the boy too. But he won’t mind that I didn’t. And given him the bag of tomatoes. There weren’t that many left, and what am I going to do with them?’ I walk to the elevator. Elevator comes and the doors open. Nobody’s inside it. ‘See,’ I say, as the doors close. ‘When you use your brains, you get things done. Don’t you feel good now? But really feel good at helping her out rather than deserting her? I do, I really do. This is how I should act from now on. Helpful. Quick-thinking. Imaginative. If only I could,’” and the dream ended.

  He turns off the light and lies back in bed. Room’s dark. He forgot to look at his watch, but it must be around midnight. Of course he could get the watch off the night table and press the light button on it to see the time, or even turn the table lamp back on, but why bother? It’s around midnight. He’s almost sure it’s around midnight. He got to sleep around nine, as he usually does, and he’s almost always able to sleep for about three hours before he has to get up to pee. Then he sleeps, usually, another three hours, and he always falls back to sleep easily, before he has to get up again to pee. Then another three hours, and this time it usually takes him a bit longer to get back to sleep, before he gets up around six to pee, and stays up. Makes the bed, washes up, and so on. New day; all that. That’s his almost unvarying routine for sleep at night, but anyway, is there a connection between the photograph and his dream? That he wanted to leave Abby, in the sense of splitting up with her—ending their marriage—though in real life he never did or ever even thought of it, though in sort of metaphorical life, if he can put it that way, she left him, her body did … anyway, by dying. No, none of that works, or if it does, it was by accident. The boy, though—after all, he was his son in the dream, so connected to him—could be the hysterical person he was sometimes when things became overwhelming for him. Too overwhelming. The tasks, he’s saying; the obligations. Things he had to do and which nobody could do for him. Or which nobody but him could do for her,
is what he’s saying. That’s the way he sometimes felt then. He would always apologize to her for his momentary hysteria. Or hysteria that lasted a minute or two and once or twice a few minutes more. Throwing a lamp against a wall. He once did that. In front of the kids and her. Glass from the two shattered light bulbs all over the place and the lampshade destroyed. She always accepted his apology, and sometimes said he should apologize to the kids too, which he did, though not without her saying almost every time after the first few—it’s true; he acted that way a lot the last ten years or so of her life—that he’s always immediately apologizing for his awful behavior, and she once called it “despicable” and another time “absolutely loony.” “But all right,” she said a couple of times, “and I mean this. Maybe it’s good in some way that you get out your hysteria, which is mostly your anger at me for getting sick and being a drain on you, we both know that. At least it’s quick.” And that she looked so healthy in the dream and was coming home the next day? Why wasn’t it that she was coming home that day? She seemed ready. Rosy, healthy, sitting off the bed, swinging her legs. Well, it’s never explained, and it was a dream. What he would have wanted, of course, in or out of the dream. Her healthy and home, if not that day then the next, but sooner the better. So another dream of wishful thinking? What else could it be of? And that he came up with a way to stop their son’s hysteria? That he used his brains for practical purposes, as he said, and not just for his writing, and was effective? He made Abby happy by doing it. The last few years of her life he did everything he could to make her happy. Made her smile and sometimes laugh with his remarks and jokes and just made her feel good, or a bit better about herself. That true? That’s true. In the dream she definitely felt good that he’d helped her out. Left her with an unhysterical son. He forgot to write in the dream notebook that at the end of the dream, when he went back into her hospital room with their son, he—the boy—screamed “Mommy,” and ran up to her and hugged with both arms one of her swinging legs—the right, not that it makes any difference which one—and kept his arms around it, hugging tight, her leg against his cheek, wouldn’t let go even when she tried to pry his arms loose, and this made her point to what their son was doing and smile. But again, what to make of it? Well, she was happy. That’s always a nice thing to see in his dreams. But here, happy because of what reason? She was over her pneumonia, for one thing, or whatever she came into the hospital for, and very soon was going home. Happy with her family too, probably. Happy that she could smile and laugh and sit off the bed and swing her legs. And if he was the boy in a way, as he said before, then he didn’t want to let go and stop hugging her and everything that could mean. Who can say? Also again, where was he going when he left the room? He said he was late, but for what? Said he had to go as if there was nothing that could stop him except her suddenly becoming very sick again, showing the same signs of pneumonia she showed when she got it all those times. Disorientation, barely recognizing him, talking jibberish—external signs. The first time he saw them all at once he had no clue what they meant or what was causing them. So: probably home to write. Can’t think of anything else he’d leave her for. He frequently got frustrated, but would never show it to her, when he couldn’t find any time to write while she was in the hospital. And her stays there lasted two to three weeks, and with rehabilitation after, sometimes a month and a half. He spent his entire day with her and was too rushed in the morning to write before he left for the hospital and too tired when he got home at night. Got there at eight when visiting hours started. Helped her with her breakfast, once she was eating real food again and not being fed through tubes. Kept her company all day. Read to her and listened to music with her and watched a movie or PBS program with her, or part of one, on the television in her room, and didn’t leave the hospital till visiting hours were over at eight that night. So now he’s almost sure he was leaving her in his dream to write at home. That’s what he vaguely remembers thinking in the dream. And as he said, or thinks he did—said to himself—he’d be back later for several hours. And at the end of the visiting hours he’d take their son home with him and the next morning he and the boy would come to the hospital to take her home. Or he’d leave the boy with someone the next morning and take her home alone and then get their son. Anyway, though he forgets what it was but thinks he touched on it, there was a connection between the dream and photograph, right? It’s been so long since he thought of it, but seems so.